What makes a brand “meaningful”? Multinational advertising, PR and research firm Havas SA has studied this topic for the past decade, conducting a survey every other year in which it attempts to rate the world’s most important brands based on consumer responses to questions about select key brand attributes.

According to Maarten Albarda, the methodology behind the Havas surveys is solid:

The Havas research is both global and quantitative — including more than 350,000 respondents in over 30 countries.

The 2019 Havas research shows that ~77% of the 1,800 brands studied don’t cut it with consumers. This finding came in response to the question of whether consumers would care if the brands disappeared tomorrow.

That’s the biggest disparity ever seen in the Havas surveys. Two years ago, the percentage was 74%.

Which brands perform best with consumers? The top five ranked for 2019 are the following:

#1 Google

#2 PayPal

#3 Mercedes-Benz

#4 WhatsApp

#5 YouTube

Four of these five are brands that are all about “utility” — helping consumers deal with actions (watching, searching and sharing). The odd one out here is Mercedes-Benz — suggesting that there is something enduring about the time-tested reputation for “German engineering.”

What’s equally interesting is which high-profile brands don’t crack the Top 30. I’m somewhat surprised that we don’t see the likes of Apple and Coca-Cola in the group. On the other hand, Johnson & Johnson comes in at #6, which seems surprising to me because I doubt that J&J has the same kind of consumer awareness as many other brands.

The Havas research reveals that the highest ranked brands are ones that score well on purchase intent and the justification of carrying a premium price. Repurchase scores are also higher, making it clear that a meaningful brand translates into meaningful business benefits.

In addition to reporting on international results, Havas also releases a U.S. analysis. Historically, U.S. consumers have been even more parsimonious in choosing to bestow a “meaningful” attribution on brands. In fact, the percentage of American consumers earmarking specific brands as indispensable hovers around 10%, compared to the mid-20s across the rest of the world.

The reason why is quite logical: American consumers tend to have more brand choices — and the more choices there are, the less any one brand would cause consternation if it disappeared tomorrow.

Click here for more reporting and conclusions from the Havas research.

In 2011, ~96% of Google’s revenues came from PPC advertising. In 2014, it’s ~97%.

But Google isn’t the only behemoth whose income is completely tied to advertising. Over at Facebook, ~93% of the company’s more than ~12 billion in revenues come from advertising as well.

Compared to Google, Facebook is a relative newcomer to the advertising game. But once it got in on the action, its growth was very robust.

In 2014 alone, Facebook’s advertising revenues were up 58% over the previous year.

But … there’s a bit of a problem. In a world where advertising revenues are tied to “eyeballs,“ Facebook’s user growth isn’t on the right trajectory. When the network has nearly 1.5 billion active users already, there’s not a lot of room for expansion.

This is reflected in Facebook’s Q4 year-over-year percentage growth stats as published by Mediassociates, a media planning and buying agency:

2009: ~260% year-over-year growth

2010: ~69% growth

2011: ~39% growth

2012: ~25% growth

2013: ~16% growth

2014: ~13% growth

One can easily imagine 2015’s growth figure dipping into the single digits, giving Facebook all the hallmarks of being a mature company in a maturing market.

But the always-enterprising folks at Facebook have had something up their sleeve which they’re rolling out to the market now: getting into the multi-billion credit-card payments business.

They’re starting small: introducing a “send-friends-money” functionality to Facebook’s Messenger app. But this rather innocuous addition hardly does justice to Facebook’s end-game strategy.

When you think about it, Facebook’s aims make a lot of sense. With nearly 1.5 billion active users around the world, Facebook’s accounts make PayPal’s ~162 million active accounts seem pretty paltry by comparison.

Without doubt, Facebook is also looking at the huge amount of business done by American Express and VISA; think of the billions of dollars those companies earn by charging merchants between 2% and 3.5% on the value of each credit-card transaction.

Facebook’s entry into the business can be facilitated neatly through its Messenger mobile app, making it just as easy (or easier) to pay for goods and services as with a credit card.

Considering that Facebook’s users with mobile phones are already spending time on the network an average of an hour per day, it’s pretty easy to see how people could make the transition from traditional credit and debit card payments to using their Facebook app for precisely the same purposes.

And Facebook could sweeten the pot by working with retailers and marketers to offer real cash loads that would likely juice participation even more – sort of a cash rebate in advance of the purchase rather than afterward.

So we shouldn’t think of Facebook’s new “send-friends-money” feature as a one-off function.

Instead, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. If I were a manager at VISA or AmEx, I’d be thinking long and hard about the real motivations – and real implications – of Facebook’s latest moves.

What’s happening with e-invoicing support services for small businesses these days?

Minneapolis, MN-based financial services industry market research firm Barlow Research Associates, Inc. reported in January 2014 that two of the three large banking institutions that had been offering e-invoicing services have now retired those programs.

Indeed, you won’t find mention of them anywhere on their small business online banking websites.

Donna Arce

According to Donna Arce, a Barlow Research client executive, both Chase and Wells Fargo dropped e-invoicing in 2013, making Bank of America the only one of the nation’s 14 top banks still offering this service. (Existing e-invoicing customers at Chase remain grandfathered in … for now.)

Reportedly, the reason behind the elimination of e-invoicing services was low usage.

But was this usage a function of low demand … or was it actually the result of limited market availability?

After all, Arce reports that overall invoice volumes are notable. For the typical small business enterprise, approximately 75 paper invoices and 10 electronic invoices are generated in any given month.

In the middle market segment, the volume of invoices is quite a bit higher: Those companies average just over 1,250 paper invoices and more than 250 electronic invoices in the average month.

For answers to the question about inherent e-invoicing demand, we can look to PayPal, one of several non-bank providers of e-invoicing services.

According to Chris Morse, a PayPal spokesperson, “millions of users” have accessed company’s online invoicing services – particularly since 2011 when the product was redesigned with more robust functionality and features.

For an analyst’s column she wrote on the topic, Barlow Research’s Donna Arce reported on remarks made by René Lacerte, founder and CEO of invoice management firm Bill.com, on the elements that are essential for making sure that e-invoicing is a viable solution for business owners.

Quoting Lacerte:

“Working in an entirely online environment is not realistic for many businesses, [which] need a receivables solution that will track and manage both paper-based and electronic invoices and payments in one system.

“Integration with accounting software is key to businesses adopting any financial management tool, including e-invoicing. Without integration, businesses must re-key data from one system to another, which is both time-consuming and can be fraught with errors.

“Issuing the invoicing and accepting payment are just part of the overall receivables process … The ability to collaborate with customers via a portal where invoices can be referenced, documents shared and notes exchanged, dramatically reduces the time businesses spend managing these inquiries.”

The PayPal approach is quite flexible in terms of the payment options for the recipient of the invoice. Choices include its own PayPal bill payment option, along with credit and debit card payments as alternatives.

Contrast this with Bank of America, which requires the recipient to log on to a payment center, agree to terms, and then upload account information to make a payment – debit and credit cards not accepted.

Contrasting PayPal and the approach of the commercial banks, is it any wonder that the one is experiencing growth … while the others have seen low usage?

Of course, there’s also the issue of fees charged for e-invoicing services. PayPal’s fee structure is different than how the commercial banks have charged for services, in that a portion of PayPal’s fee is based on a percentage of the transaction value (currently around 3%). Depending on each company’s individual characteristics, that pricing model may or may not be the most lucrative for users.

Bottom-line, it’s clear that e-invoicing isn’t a dying service. But how flexibly it’s presented – and the degree to which it can actually reduce inherently labor-intensive in-house administrative activities – spells the difference between its success or failure as a business service.

In other words … the difference between PayPal and the giant commercial banks.

… And effective too, evidently, as numerous elected officials have scooted away from the legislation (including some who were once co-sponsors of the legislation.)

Among the more interesting commentary I’ve read from concerned citizens on this topic is a note I received from Wolfgang Nebmaier, an industry colleague who provides business translation services for corporations.

He has is an interesting perspective, I think, considering his background and business activities. Here are some excerpts from what he wrote me:

I am of German descent. This makes the issue of censorship very personal to me. During all times of state terrorism, free speech was not free. Instead, [an elaborate] spy system is established, as was the case with Hitler, and later Stalin, and later … anywhere.

To speak your mind without making sure the walls “have no ears” was potentially fatal. In fact, my father … barely escaped death, but only because he knew the side streets of Munich ‘like the back of his hand’ and was able to ditch his pursuers. He spent the remaining time of the Third Reich hiding – along with his uncle, who had escaped from Dachau – under the snow in a mountain cabin. Believe me, this history is engraved ‘deep in my DNA.’

In all cases of curtailed civil liberties, a perceived external threat is used to justify the big, crude hand of the state appropriating the role of protector …

And make no mistake, we already live in an extremely supervised state. There are more than ample mechanisms in place to monitor and watch people closely. As an example, PayPal, ‘the world’s most-loved way to pay and get paid,’ monitors and analyzes the amounts and subjects of all your money traffic. Recently, this led to a ‘friendly reminder’ to me that I had had too many transactions of a certain amount with a certain title; I was forced to justify all the amounts and the title.

So state censorship is just a law away. The infrastructure is already in place in terms of technology and people.

Every time an “authority” is created, inevitably it wants to prove itself necessary, assert itself and re-enforce its power. It will, sooner or later, be champing at the bit to ‘do its thing.’

Another tidbit: I am a translator and, as such, occasionally canvas job sites. Recently when I looked for translation jobs, there were just a few – except for a plethora of national security-related language analysis jobs. These are Blackwater-type, non-governmental government proxies hired to monitor whatever they are told to monitor – ‘just doing their job.’ The infrastructure of Big Brother watching every click we make is in place, my friend … way in place!

Regardless of what side you take in the SOPA/PIPA debate, the concerns raised by Wolfgang are well worth considering. They’re definitely food for thought for the 21st Century.